


The Devil and Mischance

by Gileonnen



Category: Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2) - Shakespeare
Genre: Esperance, Fever Dreams, M/M, Military Sleeping Arrangements, Missing Scene, Unreasonable Displays of Manly Approbation, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old Northumberland is a wolf, mayhap, but his son is a lord, and shall have a lordly welcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil and Mischance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speakmefair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/gifts).



Mordake returns from the enemy camp with his eyes wild and his throat welling with tales. Henry Percy the Younger, the scourge of Scotland, had supped at the same table with his prisoners and spoken with them of tournaments bravely won, telling jokes in the unmusical accents of Northumberland. "He would have yielded me up to the king, Father, but his good grace would not permit it," Mordake says, pacing the room with the steady tread of a bear circling his post. "Oh, he is a fierce lord, a _fine_ lord, or would be were he not the king's man!"

"If the rumors from the south be true, he's the king's man no longer," says Douglas. "His father noses about in Scotland, got up in sheep's clothing after all these years playing the lean English wolf." He watches his eldest son with arms folded, and finds that the boy looks fitter than he did when he fell. His injuries have been tended well, and his clothes hang better on his narrow chest, as though he has been properly fed. It is no dishonor to be held captive by so good a man as the Hotspur of the North, thinks Douglas, when the English knight knows something of courtesy.

He has once been the young Hotspur's prisoner, and found him a fit companion for bloody thoughts--as hot and eager for the field as a young boy new to battle, as doughty as a soldier twice his years. His laugh had rung raucous from the stones, brazen as a warning bell.

Old Northumberland is a wolf, mayhap, but his son is a lord, and shall have a lordly welcome.

* * *

By the time Hotspur reaches the camp at Shrewsbury, the cookfires have burned low and Douglas's kin have retired for the night. He wakes to the clatter of armor as Hotspur barges into his tent, and he has scarcely time to seize and raise his sword before the young knight is seizing him in a metal-cased embrace. "Drop your weapon, Douglas; we are more than brothers tonight!" cries Hotspur, his red hair touseled and his eyes flashing mirth. "Together we'll turn the world on its ear, and batter out the superfluity--"

"Hold, knight!" laughs Douglas, disentangling. His page is blinking like a dreamer, and with a gesture Douglas dismisses him; he sheaths his sword and puts it down beside his pallet, then regards young Hotspur at last.

He likes what he sees--strong neck and ruddy cheeks, the bridge of Hotspur's nose sun-freckled from long service out of doors; the man is tall and powerfully built, and the fire beyond the tent's opening limns his armor with gold. "Hast thou come to lay plans with me, Percy," asks Douglas, "Or to crush the life from me?"

"I came as soon as we had brought our aching head to Shrewsbury--and would I had a tonic to fire them! They are the finest of men; our alliance cannot fail; and yet they quail and drag their feet like women!" Hotspur begins to undo his armor, and Douglas has done service enough as a page to lend his hands. Together they uncase him slowly.

"Pay no mind to their grousing," he says, his fingers quick on buckles and braces. "They'll have spleen enough for battle when they catch sight of the enemy's fires. How went the journey else?"

"Laggardly," mutters Hotspur. He tugs hard at a tricky lace, and it only tightens in response. "I'm eager to close my eyes, that I might lay them on Bolingbroke's poxy face the sooner."

"Now thou'rt speaking like a Scotsman," Douglas chuckles. "Have thy men settled thine equipage?"

"As well as they might in this damned darkness. I'd welcome a bed, if your men have any free; I need no lordly feather mattress when there's a plain soldier's bedroll to be spared."

Douglas has to smile as the young man's naivete. "There's many plain soldiers would slit thy throat as soon as bed with thee; thou'rt in a Scottish camp of war, my proud Earl of Northumberland."

"I hadn't known that Scots were such ingrate allies," Hotspur says, snorting as the last piece of armor falls away. "And you, Douglas? Are you so niggardly?"

It's only the kind of request that any soldier might make, when the light's too poor to choose good ground for campsites and the day has been full with marching. Something in the Englishman's posture makes Douglas pause before answering, though; he is old enough by now to be shrewd, young enough to remember the pride-puffed supplication in that stance. He smiles, teeth faintly glinting in the firelight. "Shouldst ask to share my pallet, if that's thine aim."

He knows that Hotspur's freckle-spotted neck will be flushing. "Then let me share it and have done with this game of 'If thou wouldst but ask' and 'Bend thy knee' and all the damned ceremony of the thing!"

"Couch thyself, Percy." Douglas goes to release the flap of the tent, closing them off; perhaps his page will return later, once he has scrounged a bite or found a camp-follower to tup, but that's of little concern to Douglas. The boy will learn the man's work of war better outside the tent than in it.

Hotspur's skin is hot in the July warmth, and Douglas can feel his ire radiating out from him like a second, deeper heat. He can nearly feel the younger man's pulse thrumming beneath the frail shell of his rough, fair skin; it beats a fast tattoo that signals war.

When Hotspur's hand closes on Douglas's wrist in the darkness, Douglas clasps his wrist in return--and in an instant Hotspur is clinging to him full-body, leg flung over his waist and breath hot-sour at Douglas's cheek. _Esperance_, he groans, lips brushing Douglas's ear; _Esperance--_

Douglas wills his breathing steady, but he cannot quiet his hammering heart. He shakes Hotspur awake, and in the sweat-slick heat of their embrace Hotspur kisses him as though he hopes to find salvation in it.

* * *

In the morning young Henry Percy is animated, eager, his voice striking fire as he sings Douglas's praises or shouts down his father's absence. His eyes are fever-bright, mad-bright; Worcester keeps trying to catch Douglas's eye, as though he hopes to enlist him as an ally in calming the boy's choler.

Douglas will not be made Worcester's ally in anything. He has joined with the Hotspur of the North, and no other.


End file.
